Writing a book - hunting expertise required
 

Greetings, folks! I'm currently writing up the first draft of a fictional book and i'm in need of your expertise. I've spent several months researching various aspects of the story whereby I have no experience, and with regards to hunting, I'm at some loss. If anyone knowledgeable enough could help answer some of my questions, I'd sure appreciate it.A part of the story is set somewhere in the great outdoors of America, this area is home to Roe, Fallow, Red deer, and bears. The deer are predominantly the chosen diet of the hunters and my questions revolve around them. A good place to start would be:

How many days/weeks could you live off a killed adult male Roe? Assuming you carry out all the required prep of the meat after the fact?

Any tips or links on how to appropriately store your kill? Assuming that you have very little access to modern tools.

Another question I'm indecisive on is what calibre rifle weapon is best for shooting deer and bear? It should be understood that the hunters only have 1 weapon and so being at disadvantage isn't necessarily a bad thing, so long as they could hunt deer successfully and defend against a bear maul.

I have an instance where the rifle misfires, though the primer is dented. Can anyone technically explain why that could happen? Excluding the rifle being cleaned properly.

On average, how long might it take, in terms of shots fired, for a person to begin to go deaf if they didn't use any ear protection? I understand that people generally follow strict safety precautions but somewhere in the ball park would be good as an educated guess.

I have more questions but I'll leave these up for now. Again, I appreciate any wisdom this community may have around these questions. Cheers!

" the story is set somewhere in the great outdoors of America, this area is home to Roe, Fallow, Red deer, and bears. The deer are predominantly the chosen diet of the hunters and my questions revolve around them. A good place to start would be":

My suggestion is that you write a book about a subject you know! Your quote above shows you do not have any knowledge about hunting or the wildlife that lives in America. I prefer people who write about hunting be hunters and at least have a modicum of knowledge about game species and hunting. There are enough people out there now who have no business writing about hunting and do a disservice to hunting and hunters and the sport. You cannot asked a few questions and request tips on a message board to gain a lifetime of knowledge, fiction or factual book it will not be good.

You might start with Wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_deer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_deer

Only two searches and I can tell you that your character is probably hunting in Europe or a game preserve if he is in north America. If he is in NA tell him to follow the fence until he gets to the house or a road, then he can follow the road to the house.

May be "live" a month, survive? Longer or until it rots.

You could smoke it if you have skills. You'd need something sharp, and enclosure to hold smoke in from a fire. A tool or skill to build fire. That is going to draw the attention of the people looking for you. As will rifle shots. Normally it is quite difficult to determine the direction of one shot very precisely. Two shots helps a LOT. Three shots in a row and most people could walk right to them unless they pack up and move VERY quickly and cover their exit trail.

Can't go wrong with a 30-06 remington 700 rifle to hunt or kill anything in north america or your European transplants. People hunt white tails, mule deer, elk in the wild of North America.

You are going to run out of ammo and starve or freeze to death long before any one is going "completely deaf", yet some hearing damage can occur with the first shot especially in enclosed spaces. It affects your sensitivity to hear high pitched noises first and most and it normally takes about half a life time for most shooters even back in the day when no one wore much ear protection. First thing you'll notice is kids and women mumble everything. Then the next hunting season it seems you don't see or hear as much game. May be even the season AFTER THAT you notice it isn't that there is less game, you notice a squirrel on the ground in the dry leaves and you don't hear that. "I should have heard that. The woods used to annoy me listening to all the squirrels and thing they are deer. I wonder how many deer I'm not seeing now because I don't hear them in the leaves and look for them..."

If he fired, dented the primer, and didn't go off, he is probably shooting reloads. If he is a competent, skilled person, some circumstance lead him to use someone else's reloads. If it is a serious situation, it didn't matter at the time, he racked the bolt and shoved in the next bullet. A Remington 700 holds 4 in the magazine and loads from the top with the bolt open in to a box magazine.

Roe deer, Fallow Deer and Red Deer are not American game animals. They are European. If you toss bears into the mix then you better make your location someplace like Romania or Bulgaria which are the only places I know that you can get all 4 in a free range state. Just sayin you may want to actually be on a continent that has the animals.

Thanks for the heads up. I've only written in a Roe so far, though wanted to explore more animals. It's tricky since the whole story takes place at an undetermined time far in the future, therefore I imagined that migrating patterns will have changed along with climate and many other things.

Thanks, Jack! This is precisely what I’m after. So, other than shooting a reload, are there any circumstances which may trigger a misfire by a competent shooter? Perhaps something which couldn’t be helped or overlooked in the moment? I have it in mind that the rifle is well kept, though quite old. Is it possible that one of the rifles component parts can significantly wear down over time which could lead to a misfire? Thanks again.

Unlikely.

Not likely.

Some people will remove a firing pin for safety reasons making the weapon useless for anything but a club until it is "repaired" but then it will NOT dent the primer.

It is NOT completely unheard of to get a dud in modern factory loaded ammunition but that is about one in a thousand or more with reputable manufacture and fresh ammunition, meaning not 80 year old Greek surplus ammunition from the old WWII lend lease program. You could do a little research on that and work it in, making the scenario plausible. Especially even further in to the future.

Surplus ammunition is going to all be full metal copper jacket and some of those will be armor piercing and marked to identify as such.

Normal civilian hunting ammunition is all soft tip, hollow point, or some type of plastic ballistic tip. It is required by current hunting regulations in every state as far as I know.

Could even guarantee yourself probably 10,000 copies sold by working it around an M1 Garand instead of the Remington 700. Collectors and fans are nutz over their Garands and will buy about anything concerning them just so they can yap to each other about it.

If you are a "technical" writer in the vein of Tom Clancy it is a gold mine of jargon and nostalgia but you better get it right or they will roast you over the coals in effigy if they can't track you down for the real thing.

https://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/

I own two of those.

I been thinking about that dented primer, but didn't fire scenario. Trying to diagnose it like it is someone with a rifle having that problem.

One possibility would be "light strikes" due to an old, worn, or broken spring on the firing pin. This an cause unreliable ignition. Sometimes it fires, some times it don't. It can be aggravated by mixed brands of ammunition as different manufactures use different primer manufacture and have different criteria for the primers they buy and use. You have several primer variables in all types of just rifle ammunition. Large Rifle primers, small rifle primers, magnum rifle primers of both LR & SR, standard primers and military grade primers and I'm no expert, just a reloader. There are probably more. These have different requirements for the strength of impact by the fireing pin to set them off and rate of burn and even that could fluctuate if you hit a hard primer with a light strike it may fire, not fire, or even hang fire.

I'll go double check my manuals to be sure if there are loads listed for both standard and magnum primers in 30-06.

I searched 30-06 loads in both of my old manuals Speer and Hornady. These books are both probably 30 years old right now or more. The Hornady had no loads listed with magnum primers only standard.

BUT the Speer manual was a different story. About half the loads in ever bullet weight list the possible use of magnum primers.

The important part of that information is to make it plausible that about any manufacture may have used either standard or magnum primers. Not that we KNOW they did or didn't just that it is plausible. ALLOWING for the possibility that one shell or a few shells of may be a different brand was mixed in with our characters bag of ammunition. MOST current bolt action rifles do not use removable box magazines. ONE OR TWO do. The newer current production Savage 110 something or other comes to mind but I don't think that is available in 30-06, only 223 which is a poor choice for multiple use applications including big or dangerous game.

The comment "bag of ammunition" is what sent me out that direction to explain why he is not using a detachable magazine. If our character used an M1 Garand he could be carrying a belt of magazine pouches with CLIPS of ammunition with 7 rounds in each.

Any way, meaning it could be plausible to have a hard primer combine with a rifle in the habit of giving light strikes any way, to give a dented primer that did not fire yet it does on the rest of the ammunition used in it.

This is going quite a long way in to the lands of "not likely" and the "never seen 'em" tribes. But it is the direction I'd look if someone brought that situation to me to help him figure out how to fix it.

Thank you for that fountain of information, Jack. I believe I could work something around the M1 Garand providing the en bloc clips could slot a variant brand from a mixed bag of ammunition. That way, I could follow up with the misfire and have a plausible reason behind the dented primer. I may even use the "M1 thumb" lore with regards to the somewhat novice secondary character. Though as I understand, that tends to only happen when you're cleaning the rifle.

Thanks again for going the extra mile, much obliged.

It happens mostly when you load the rifle and release the bolt after loading the magazine and don't get your thumb out of the way fast enough. You know real authors do years of research about the subjects they write about, they don't just go on a message board and ask questions from people who may or may not know what they are talking about. That is not aimed at Jack Ryan but there are plenty of people on message boards who if they do not know something they will guess and just make it up. You are not doing research, you are doing a shortcut, putting together bits and pieces of things you do not understand told to you by others. How can you expect to write about things you don't even understand and end up with something worth while?

You can use any 30-06 ammunition in those enblocks. I use the flat nose soft points designed for a tube magazine in a lever action in mine to hunt deer and they function perfectly. The only problem with the Garand is modern ammunition verses surplus. It is designed originally to use the lower pressure surplus ammunition but it is not uncommon to use various after market gas plugs to adapt to various power levels of ammunition. I use the enlarged port gas plug from Garandgear.com in mine to shoot ALL types of ammunition with out damage to my rifles.

https://www.garandgear.com/ported-gas-plug.html

Any one with a Garand rifle who had NEVER had at least a little case of Garand Thumb has not shot it very much. Once is usually enough though. I can tell you, it hurts.

That's why it is so funny when SOMEONE ELSE does it. LOL

That is a fact OT is telling you. People on the internet will fill you full of manure just for laughs sometimes.

It looks like you are in Scotland and it may be a problem to shoot there but I think there are clubs there. You could find a place to shoot a little bit I be and that is a LOT OF FUN if you write books or not. Or you could fly over here and hunt/shoot a deer with mine. Get some first hand experience in the wild Indiana. (that's sarcasm). Indiana ain't that wild.

https://countrysportscotland.com/deer-stalkinghunting/

Looking at their web page, I see where you came up with your choice of game animals.

That terrain looks more like western USA to me than east of the Mississippi, just from a quick 2 minute glance through their web page. There isn't going to be a list of game animals like that wandering the western USA in the next 100 years even if humans were wiped off the planet today.

Write what you know or at least as close to it as you can. I'd set that location in Northern Scotland if I were you. The same weapons we have been discussing are probably pretty common there thanks to the WWII lend lease program between out countries. I'd read that book regardless of either location just the same.

Scotland has a long hunting heritage for both big and small game. You may wan to try and locate a Game Keeper on one of the large estates and pick his brain, perhaps learn to shoot some firearms.

For the proper aging process: After gutting...use a block an tackle to suspend a skin on gutted deer from a rear leg hook in the air, in a room that is under 50 degrees(?) fahrenheit for a certain amount of days (four or five?)

I would tend to say...using 6.5 caliber premium bullets on up to the 375 range is suitable for deer and bear; though a 375 is overkill for deer, but not for big antelope in Africa --- Though, shoot what you can shoot best. I use a 30-06 SAKO bolt rifle for deer or bear and a custom Belgium Mauser bolt rifle, in 338 Winchester magnum for bear or elk.

It's been said..."that a click instead of a bang is the loudest sound in the woods." One reason could be excess oil inside the bolt, where the oil would seep into a primer from the bolt and compromise detonation. Another primer failure would be excess oil inside the bolt in a cold climate, where the oil would make the firing pin sluggish. Try removing all oil from the inside of the bolt, before you go hunting again.

One shot --- without hearing protection --- can damage a person's hearing. That's why I use amplified hearing protection headphones, while on most of my small and big game hunting jaunts. The muffs amplify hearing up to 125%, with a hearing cutoff, during a muzzle blast, from a firearm.

May I suggest not using a M1 Garand for deer, unless you use hard primers, on soft or hollow point ammo --- Because of the chance of a slam fire, especially by sending the bolt into battery fast enough, while using single shot and not a full or partially loaded magazine.

If you hear a "pfft" sound while taking a shot...you could have a primer only detonation, that causes a squib load, where the bullet gets lodged in the bore of the barrel. Always check the bore for obstruction after a primer only detonation, before sending a live round into the pipe. It could be a cause that the gunpowder is soiled with water or oil, or no gunpowder in the shell casing before detonation.

Here is a group of pure M1 Garand owners, shooters, experts and the experts there will not allow you to be lead astray by the shall we say, "less experienced", guaranteed. The forum is closely watched for accuracy. Most of the people there are FAR more knowledgeable than I, at least on that specific weapon and ammunition.

https://mewe.com/group/5a9f0373887f32793f1d4943

For the OP, you are getting some really good info. Many authors who write about guns or hunting in a novel setting aren't necessarily subject matter experts but they tend to lean heavily on people who are to get the technical aspects correct since a novel that includes those aspects is likely to attract attention of people who are into guns and/or hunting. If the details don't pass muster, they usually put the novel back on the shelf without buying it. Like any other business, those final decisions are yours. And like any other business, the results are yours also. Good luck.

As a reminder: Do not use regular factory 30-06 ammo in a M1 Garand (Gar-and)...only use ammo designated for the Garand, because of the possibility of bending the OP rod, while using regular hi-power ammo.

I like mine {HRA Garand) in 30-06, that I bought for a grand, about 5 years ago.

Books: Ernest Hemingway's (non-fiction) - "The Green Hills of Africa" & "Hemingway on Hunting"

Thanks, Jack. I'll have a rummage around there too.

Incidentally, I have an appointment towards the end of the month with an estate owner just outside my city. Hoping to glean some insight there, thanks.

The train may have left the station already on this topic -- I have not read all the posts in this thread -- but another scenario in which the primer may be lightly dented but not ignite is if the weather is cold and the firing pin mechanism is somewhat gunked up with dirt and oil. So, the gunky dirt and oil would be sluggish and would resist the movement of the firing pin.

I keep my rifles clean, but I don't always take my bolt apart to clean the firing pin mechanism (usually a spring and a pin that is free to slide inside the bolt frame). When I have done this, I found the firing pin was pretty darned clean, which did not provide me with much incentive to take it apart and clean it every time I clean my rifle. Some people never clean their rifles. Some people use a lot of oil -- excess oil -- when they clean their rifles. The gunk and/or the excess oil can cause problems. The oil, for example, is not stable over time and -- like gasoline in a lawn mower or outboard motor -- can change to a varnish-like state.

You get the picture. I think someone I know actually had this experience once -- pulled the trigger, heard a faint "dink," but no cartridge fire occurred. He jacked the bolt and chambered another round, but I think the shot was gone -- the game had moved on. I don't know if he ever figured out what caused the misfire.

When I clean my rifle, I put a few drops of gun oil on a small piece of cotton cloth. I then rub this cloth over the metal surfaces I am cleaning. This lifts dirt, grit, and powder residue off of the surfaces. I use these terms "dirt, grit, powder residue" abstractly, because I can't really see WHAT is coming off the metal onto my oiled cloth, I just see this black-ish residue on the oiled cloth. My cleaning removes that stuff as well as leaving a light coat of oil on the metal surfaces that helps prevent rust. To some extent this is theoretical. My rifles are kept in a dry place. Maybe it is not the coating of oil that prevents rust but the keeping in a dry place? I use solvents to clean my rifle barrel, as this needs to remove "copper fouling" from the barrel -- metal residue from the bullet jacket -- as well as burnt powder residue. After cleaning the barrel with solvent, I dry it by running two dry patches through the barrel in succession. Then I run a patch that has been lightly oiled through the barrel . . . coating the interior metal surface of the barrel to prevent rusting.

It is said that truth is stranger than fiction. I take this to mean, sometimes things really happen that are frankly implausible. In fiction, you are sort of bound to make all key plot events plausible. It seems to me you have enough information to provide a plausible plot event based on a misfire. You could plausibly make the misfire a random "**** happens" kind of plot event or make it a "neglect" or "ignorance" caused kind of plot event. For the neglect or ignorance angle you could blame the misfire on neglectful maintenance of the rifle (failure to clean regularly) or on ignorance (didn't know it was needful to clean).